gold

The engineering giant that helped build Queensland

Nations are not built by those who sit down and ask for doles or alms, but by the daring and the bold. They are not built by the timid, but by the dauntless and adventurous.
R. S. Maynard
 

Maryborough was truly an essential industrial city in Queensland’s early history. It served as a pivotal distribution centre that supported three major industries: agriculture, manufacturing, and timber.

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The big shift – towns that have moved in Australia

As we travelled around Australia, I was amazed at how many towns we came across that had shifted for whatever reason. While I already knew about a few, I had no idea many towns were forced to move.

Probably one of the best-known is Eucla on the Nullarbor Plain. The Eucla Telegraph Station opened in 1877 and helped link Western Australia with the rest of Australia and the world.… Read more

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Connecting Western Australia to the rest of the world

Introduction

The first telegraph message in the world was sent on 24 May 1844, using Morse code, a system of dots and dashes representing letters of the alphabet. The system was invented by Samuel Morse, inspired by the fact that when his wife died in 1825, he did not hear of the event until days after her funeral due to the slowness of communications at the time.… Read more

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Why on earth do we continue to celebrate Earth Day?

The reason why humans prioritise bad news, according to Nobel Prize-winning behavioural psychologist Daniel Kahneman, is because “organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce”.


In the lead-up to this year’s Earth Day celebrations later this month, I thought it was timely to look closely at whether they are still relevant, given the dire predictions that have emanated from this day each year have never come to pass. … Read more

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Living on the buttongrass plain – a history of Bulgobac

I grew up in a sawmill town on the edge of the buttongrass plain
Beside a railway track in the town of Bulgobac
Where the locos stop for water from the water tank
It also fed the sawmill and the town of Bulgobac

Gravel roads were twenty miles away and people very few
With mountains all around us with panoramic views
At night we sat at the table to a meal of wallaby stew
And mother read the bible at night by the kerosene light its true

Drivers wait from the loco as it headed south to Boco
On the way north they passed our shack in the town of Bulgobac
I was part of a big family with no power to our home
The times are gone but memories live on living on the buttongrass plain

Mother cooked from a wood fired oven Anzac biscuits she baked by the dozen
Life was tough but we never complained living on the buttongrass plain

I still recall the good old days and how we lived back then
In the sawmill town called Bulgobac growing up on a buttongrass plain
I’ll never forget with no regrets of life way back then
The times are gone but memories live on living on the buttongrass plain
 
The times are gone but memories live on growing up on a buttongrass plain

Mott Ryan “Buttongrass plains” from his CD “The Boy from the Buttongrass Plains”

Introduction

Bulgobac is a small siding on the Emu Bay Railway at the 55 Mile.… Read more

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Squeezing yield from rain – the Wheatbelt story

Tho’ it ain’t a life o’ pleasure, An’ there’s little time for leisure, It’s contentin’, in a measure, is the game of growin’ Wheat.

C. J. Dennis ‘Wheat’ 1918

Introduction

The Wheatbelt region in southern Western Australia extends across a large area as a crescent and is one of the few major agricultural regions in the world viewed from space.… Read more

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